First take a blue texture for the background and put it in Photoshop’s Normal mode. Next take a vintage theatre curtain from EKDuncan and adjust the colour balance until you achieve exactly the kind of green you love. Make sure the curtain is in Linear Burn mode. Top it off with Girl in a Large Hat by Caesar Boëtius van Everdingen (c. 1645 – c. 1650) from the Rijksmuseum. Put the latter in Multiply mode and you’ll find you’ve turned a 17th century girl into a lady from the 1940s modelling Christian Dior’s famous New Look. Who’d have thunk! Don’t you just love the hat? Incidentally, the French for New Look is ‘Le New Look’!

‘Despite a short career, Christian Dior dominated the world of fashion during the late 1940s and 1950s, with the hourglass silhouette of his voluptuous New Look.’The Design Museum

‘The New Look brought me heavy mail. Letters arrived by the thousands––mostly enthusiastic but some indignant. A garage owner from Los Angeles wrote and told me that he had sworn to “tear me apart” on his next visit to Paris. According to him, it was my fault that his wife looked like a stuffed doll of the time of the Civil War.’ — Christian DiorEnjoy Your Style.

I lament the passing of ‘ladies in hats.’ I always thought that bigger was better where hats are concerned, and this fits the bill. Despite the age of the original, the treatment transforms it very well, and the muted colours appear to suit all the applications. Very nice.
Best wishes, Pete. x